Link Banana

Timothy Noah’s hardly the first person to claim that the Democrat’s go-to economic wise men, Bob Rubin, should have to shoulder a piece of the blame for the current financial mess. But his arguments are clearly laid out, and worthy of a perusal for anyone with a faint interest in the topic.

Marc Ambinder points out that the venerable Christian Science Monitor is going to stop being a daily newspaper in April — it’ll become a weekly in print — and spend more time focusing on it’s web presence.

Obviously you wouldn’t want to use this to judge a proud carnivorium (that is: steakhouse), but I definately think this idea has some merit.

I have a theory that you can tell how much a restaurant thinks about its food by the quality of its veggie burger. The item has become the quintessential menu add-on for restaurants that want to show that they “care” about vegetarians. Restaurants, let me share a tidbit right now: Warming a pre-packaged Gardenburger, slapping it on a bun, and charging $9 for it is not caring for vegetarians. It’s caring for vegetarians’ friends who want to go to a restaurant and say, “Oh, look, they serve something for you.” Meaning: you eat boring meatless crap, and this place serves one boring meatless item.

(via Ideas)

The Financial Times confirms the good new (assuming of course, that you’re not invested in corn-based ethanol):

Six of the biggest publicly traded US ethanol producers have lost more than $8.7bn in market value since the peak of the boom in mid-2006 and the beginning of this month, according to an analysis by the Financial Times. The boom followed a 2005 law requiring refiners to mix billions of gallons of the biofuel with petrol.

(via Passport)

Blake Hounshell is quite right, this is a gem. An exiting hedge fund manager — who made 866% profit last year — manages to sound like a reasonable but bitter guy until he lapses into two paragraph I’ve heard from every pothead I’ve ever known:

Lastly, while I still have an audience, I would like to bring attention to an alternative food and energy source. You won’t see it included in BP’s, “Feel good. We are working on sustainable solutions,” television commercials, nor is it mentioned in ADM’s similar commercials. But hemp has been used for at least 5,000 years for cloth and food, as well as just about everything that is produced from petroleum products. Hemp is not marijuana and vice versa. …

I’d buy this:

The newspapers that survive will probably do so with some kind of hybrid content: analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting in a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant updating and reader interaction on the Web.

But the time for launching this strategy is growing short if it has not already passed.

And I think this is undeniable:

I still believe that a newspaper’s most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.

Altogether, a worthy read.

(via Magnetbox)

Disney’s 57 page EULA before you can watch Sleeping Beauty on Blu-ray is why we should remove any legal force from EULAs. Or ban them outright. Or at least require an executive summary so that people will know what cr*p they’re accepting before they (inevitably) blindly do so.

(via BBG)

Though I’m guessing (perhaps hoping) that the nostalgia-filled Circus Animals will remain on store shelves — someone has to buy those memories and make money by allow us to keep revisiting them, no? — this feels like a blow.

(via Slashfood)

I wouldn’t be surprised if this never happens, but Ryanair’s CEO is willing to postulate that they’ll be able to cross the “pond” for £10 some day. The way:

It believes the crisis in the aviation industry and the prospect of more airlines collapsing is set to bring the cost of aircraft down, with a glut of unwanted jets coming onto the market.

(via PSFK)

Blake Hounshell points to a handful of images of the DAX — Germany’s stock exchange — in decline that all feature the same woman. The Independent even interviewed her.

Some people of some repute — Chris Bowers, David Cay Johnston, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur — think that there’s really no need for Hank Paulson’s $700 billion dollar proposal (or anything like it). I don’t know nearly enough to have anything intelligent to say, but i thought I’d note it.

(via @gruber)

UPDATE (20 minutes later): Also:

• An open letter from economists doubtful of Paulson’s plan.
• Felix Salmon and Ryan Avent answer David Cay Johnston (linked above). (via Yglesias)
• A chart to put the massive size of the proposal in historical context. (via Kevin Drum)

Tyler Cowen points to an interesting argument: while everyone spent last year wringing their hands over the risks posed by unregulated hedge fund, it’s actually been big investment banks that are flailing and failing in the current market. A possibly takeaway:

Hedge funds might not have had all that many rules governing their behavior but their incentive pay structure seems to have regulated their risk far better.

For the eco-conscious consumer, there’s a new time sink aid available: GoodGuide. It’s description of itself:

GoodGuide™ provides the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of products and companies. GoodGuide’s mission is to help you find safe, healthy, and green products that are better for you and the planet. From our origins as a UC Berkeley research project, GoodGuide has developed into a totally independent “For-Benefit” company. We are committed to providing the information you need to make better decisions, and to ultimately shifting the balance of information and power in the marketplace.

(via Snarkmarket)

The weirdest — or perhaps most sensible — rumor you’re likely to hear today is this one:

According to Zach Klein and his valley sources, the Mormon Church’s Family History Department has made a bid to acquire Facebook:

I heard from an employee close to the deal that the Mormon church’s genealogy business made an unsolicited bid to acquire Facebook.

The Mormon Church maintains the largest genealogical database in the United States and apparently has the cash reserves necessary to make an offer of the magnitude necessary to acquire Facebook.

(via Mike Rundle)

A jarring and fascinating op-ed from Shmuel Herzfeld in tomorrow’s New York Times about, of all things, kosher meats:

In May in Postville, Iowa, immigration officials raided Agriprocessors Inc., the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the country.

What began as an immigration sting, however, quickly took on larger dimensions. News reports and government documents have described abusive practices at Agriprocessors against workers, including minors. Children as young as 13 were said to be wielding knives on the killing floor; some teenagers were working 17-hour shifts, six days a week.

… there is precedent for declaring something nonkosher on the basis of how employees are treated. Yisroel Salanter, the great 19th-century rabbi, is famously believed to have refused to certify a matzo factory as kosher on the grounds that the workers were being treated unfairly. In addition to the hypocrisy of calling something kosher when it is being sold and produced in an unethical manner, we have to take into account disturbing information about the plant that has come to light.

An under-understood truth:

Paul Krugman was observing that even though the political coverage is the part of the media that people like to talk about, it’s actually fairly marginal to the business. The New York Times is known for its hard news coverage, but he observes that from a business perspective it’s primarily a fashion and food publication that runs a small political news operation on the side. One issue of T Magazine, he says, pays for an entire NYT European bureau.

(via kottke)

Taking off on the Indian experiment, William Saletan envisions a future in which all Americans are paid for using public toilets:

I bet somebody will figure out pretty soon how to monetize toilet waste. And it won’t be the government; it’ll be the private sector. Did you see the New York Times story a few weeks back about restaurant grease? It’s being illegally siphoned from filthy bins and barrels. Bandits are selling it for conversion to biodiesel. When bandits start siphoning public toilets, maybe governments will wake up and get in on the action. And you’ll stop having to pay.

Marginal Revolution points to a peculiar fact: you can buy “futures” of almost anything, except onions.

The bulbous root is the only commodity for which futures trading is banned. Back in 1958, onion growers convinced themselves that futures traders (and not the new farms sprouting up in Wisconsin) were responsible for falling onion prices, so they lobbied an up-and-coming Michigan Congressman named Gerald Ford to push through a law banning all futures trading in onions. The law still stands.

And yet even with no traders to blame, the volatility in onion prices makes the swings in oil and corn look tame, reinforcing academics’ belief that futures trading diminishes extreme price swings.

Perhaps the most absurd part of the High Court’s ruling that Pringles are exempted from the VAT on crisps is that Proctor & Gamble happily pointed out how completely unnatural and unfoodlike their product is.

“It has a shape not found in nature, being designed and manufactured for stacking, and giving a pleasing and regular undulating appearance which permits comfortable eating.

“In this respect, it is unlike a potato crisp and, I would add, a potato stick or puff.”

He added: “A Pringle does not taste like a crisp or otherwise behave like one. Crisps give a sharply crunchy sensation under the tooth and have to be broken down into jagged pieces when chewed.

(via Slashfood)

Neatorama is offering a conveniently visual take on media ownership. Some suprised me, and there are some notable errors and omissions. The comments likely contain an answer to your concerns.